When I was with the office of program planning and evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury I worked with a young Jewish woman. She was the staff mathematician. She had lately begun taking the observance of passover and other high holy days seriously; a change from an earlier more cavalier attitude, and one that I could relate to, having been through it myself like many people in their 20’s. Anyway, I don’t know how the subject of her change came about, but I must have asked her something. She said it was because of something her mother said to her. It stuck with me and has had an influence on me ever since.

It was simply this: “If you act like it isn’t important to you, you can’t expect it to be important to anyone else.”